History

EG – FROM THE EARLY BEGINNINGS

Eurographics was formally founded in spring 1980. Under the chairmanship of José Encarnação, it was given its first operational structure, composed of an Executive Committee, an Executive Board, a Workshops and Books Board, a Professional Board and a Conference Board.
Two years later, the British Chapter was founded. The Computer Graphics Forum started and first contracts were made with ACM-SIGGRAPH (USA), Austrian Computer Graphics Association (A), British Computer Society (UK), Gesellschaft fuer Informatik (D), the J. von Neumann Society (H) and the NCGA (USA).

In 1984, now under the chairmanship of Paul ten Hagen, the German Chapter followed. Affiliation agreements between GI (D) and EG, and between SIGRAD (S) and EG were made in 1985.

In 1986 Carlo Vandoni took the lead, and in June, Eurographics was registered at the “Registre du Commerce” in Geneva. The Spanish Chapter was founded 1987, the Portuguese Chapter followed only a year later. Moreover, affiliation agreements with the Austrian Computer Graphics Association (ACGA), the German Computer Society (GI), the Norwegian Computer Graphics Scociety (NORSIGD) and the Swedish Graphics Interest Group (SIGRAD) were made along with liason agreements with societies in China and Japan.
The years 1987-1988 represented a period of stabilization for the Eurographics Association with respect to the number of individual and institutional members thanks to various promotional activities. Also, the services offered to members improved considerably: student and spouse membership were introduced, the CGF appeared at rather regular intervals and discounts to members for IEEE CG&A and for the Springer series were offered.

More affiliation agreements were made with the French Computer Society (AFCET), the Italian Computer Society (AICA), the Finnish CAD/CAM Association, the Dutch Computer Society (NGI) and with the Swiss Computer Graphics Association (SCGA) and the Nicograph Association in 1989 and 1990 under the chairmanship of Roger Hubbold. Under his lead, the EG conference proceedings were made a special issue of CGH. Furthermore, the official EG logo was created at that time, programmed by hand in PostScript.
At this time, the working groups for Pictures and Multimedia, Computer graphics and AI, Computer graphics Hardware, Scientific Visualization, Relationships Between Image Synthesis and Image Analysis were established.

In 1991, Jürgen Schönhut was elected chairman of the EG Association.
The Editor of Computer Graphics Forum changed to NCC Blackwell Publishers and H.P.Seidel was announced its new chief editor.

In 1992, David B. Arnold took over as Chair.
A new agreement with Springer Verlag to publish the Eurographics Workshops in the new “Focus on Computer Graphics” series was made in 1993.
EG started its web presence in 1995 by establishing its website under the lead of Ivan Herman.

In May 1996, on a workshop on the future of Eurographics, the main focus of EG was set as “an association of professionals to help professionals in their carreers in computer graphics and interactive digital media”.
Under the presidency of W.T.Hewitt, a liason agreement with the Chinese Computer Graphics association was also signed that year. In the following year, the Eurographics publications catalogue got inaugurated on the website www.eg.org, replacing the printed catalogue.

In 1999, under the lead of Dieter Fellner, the Online Board was instated and the cooperation agreement between Eurographics and Siggraph was renewed. In 2000, due to this cooperation, EG for the first time was operating a stand outside the exhibition area and next to the Siggraph, being a vital sign of EG and showing its standing in the graphics world. In the same year, a cooperation with IEEE TCVG was signed and the digitization of back issues of Computer Graphics Forum started.

The Italian Chapter was founded in 2001 under the presidency of P.Brunet.
While electronic voting was introduced in 2002, the Digital Library continued to grow.

In 2003 the French Chapter started along with raising amounts of memberships, the Chair at this time being P.J. Willis.
The EG Award Programme was started in 2004, founded by H.P.Seidel.